Article 26. The Biggest Boondoggle Ever in State Information Technology

The Biggest Boondoggle Ever in State Information Technology Wasted Funds  
 
This is how I describe what happened in Virginia’s Information Technology Agency VITA.
Unless the VITA contract leads to a Relational Database Management System RDMS solution the present $2.3 billion contract between VITA and Northrop Grumman will be the biggest waste ever in State Information Technology.

Background
Virginia hired Northrop Grumman the giant defense and systems-management company in 2005 under a controversial 10-year, $2.3 billion contract to run its computer and communications networks providing IT services to 90 agencies. But the state also pays the contractor for work outside of what the contract covers.  So far NG has spent a good deal of funds on linking all of the Virginia Agencies with a new protected email system and the question of centralized application software and database development is still up to the individual agencies. This has prompted state legislators to ask just what is the state getting for its money.   Ref 9. Lucas Mearian Computerworld article September 2, 2010

Comment by the author
It appears that the VITA, Northrop Grumman contract did not include a provision for the development of a centralized cloud IT system as I have recommended.  Instead they have pored nearly a $billion into trying to link together the obsolete IBM systems found in the 90 different Virginia state agencies.

VITA’s new chief information officer George F. Coulter has sacked or reassigned several senior executives of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, according to state government sources. The casualties apparently include critics of Northrop Grumman. The shakeup is an attempt to extract VITA from months of political turmoil and put back on track a shift to privately managed information-technology services beset by delays and mounting costs. Since the RDMS solution is the best and most cost effective solution Virginia’s VITA appears to be floundering making it the biggest ever boondoggle in State Information Technology.

Bringing Virginia’s State Government Back on Track
Here is what the state of Virginia needed to do to get out of this mess and start anew.  I can say with complete confidence that what ever VITA is doing it is nearly a complete waste of state funds. In fact                
VITA should never have been tasked at all. VITA was setup to manage and to make all of the 90 or so state agencies’ and entities’ computer systems work efficiently and to do this they contracted with Northrop Grumman in 2005. This was the wrong approach the assumption made then was that there was a computer problem and I agree the state’s computer systems are obsolete stand alone systems sometimes described as silos and there are more than 90 of them. But there isn’t enough money in the state of Virginia and there never will be to fix this problem by patching the old systems together. Five years into the contract and there is little to show for all the money spent except an integrated email system.

So if this were the wrong problem what should the Legislature have been doing? For all government problems the correct approach is to determine the best way to meet the states obligation organize for that and then investigate how to make it operate efficiently and only then automate the process. This attempt to fix Virginia’s obsolete IT systems before organizing and streamlining the 90 agencies and entities makes the current approach completely backward.

The real problem should have been stated “How does the state make the process of providing service to the public more efficient?” And after you have determined the best way to do that, then provide the more efficient computer systems support.  I have developed four Government Reform Models which the state of Virginia should follow.

I recommend the following approach. The state of Virginia should form a Government Reform Committee a select group of persons to study my reform models.  

The State Central Cloud Information Technology Data Center 
This is also is a part of the Centralization of State Services Reform Model.  I further recommend the implementation of a new Centralized Relational Database Management System RDMS similar to that being developed in Washington State. The RDMS is developed completely separate from the current obsolete agency computer systems. No funds should have been wasted on trying to patch the old systems. When the New Centralized Data Center and its systems are up and running the plug is pulled on the old systems.

 Why didn’t VITA come up with this solution? The answer is nearly all of the people associated with VITA have training or some kind of connection to IBM. So what’s the problem with IBM? Simply this, IBM is in business to sell a proprietary system that shuts out competitors and forces the customers to use its proprietary software. The RDMS is an open software system where an IBM computer could be replaced by a competitor’s computer. Computers can then be purchased simply for their competitive computing power and not just because it will work with the software. At least some of the VITA members must have known about the RDMS solution because it has been around for more than twenty years but it is simply not good business for IBM or its friends. VITA for all practical purposes may as well be on the IBM payroll. 

 My final recommendation is for streamlining by eliminating levels of government and downsizing the way agencies are organized through the elimination of their bureaucratic structure. The high level Lean Team after completing their work on the reorganization of Virginia’s agencies and is then merged with Top Management to become the Top Management Steering Team. Group Steering Management Teams are formed from mid management with Functional Lean Team Management reporting to them from the lower level.

The Contract with Northrop Grumman should be and probably will be canceled. The quickest way for that to happen is through pressure from the public. But the reality is that there is going to be a huge fight to keep Northrop Grumman on the job and prevent the loss of the old obsolete systems and especially the obsolete IT jobs with them.

What’s different from these reforms? 
The State of Virginia will have moved from its 19th century bureaucratic organization to the 21st century Steering Management Teams and Functional Management Teams. The state has a Centralized Cloud IT facility with a

Why Major Attempts to Fix Information Technology Are Failing

Major Information Technology failures have occurred in Indiana, Texas and the biggest of all in Virginia. These failures have several things in common aging IBM software and its inability to meet state needs with high maintenance costs. The complexity of the systems is enormous coupled by programmers who years ago failed to properly document the changes made to the software. With these problems IT managers opted to throw the problem over the fence to an outside contractor. The outside contractors were even more removed from the state’s system problems but signed on due to generous contracts.

These problems are not the fault of IBM or the states programmers. Over the years since the 1960s IBM offered the best solutions for applications and systems but in the late 80’s these systems became obsolete with the advent of Relational Database Management Systems which could be easily integrated and were much simpler cheaper to maintain. The problem was that as long as the old systems were doing a reasonable job. Why convert to the RDMS since all application programs would have to be rewritten. A second problem for IBM is that the RDMS is an open system which means that the system does not use IBM software and any vendor’s computer could replace IBM computers. IBM has known about the RDMS since the 1980’s and since most state IT managers use IBM computers and software the RDMS became a closely held secret.

These systems were not created all at one time instead states have built their systems application by application using IBM software. When it came time to pass data from one application program to another a software patch had to be written. This is extremely complicated and costly in these old obsolete IBM application programs. Yet almost all states use these systems.

The systems contractors in Indiana and Texas failed to deliver and the contracts were canceled but not before $millions of state revenues were wasted.

With Virginia’s 270 boards and commissions each with their own application programs the system also became very expensive to maintain. In 2005 Virginia formed VITA to solve the problem of integrating the 270 systems. Remember that these systems are using software technology developed 30 years ago. With the start of the Northrop Grumman contract in 2005 in Virginia and now with nearly one $billion spent with little to show VITA again renewed the contract. There simply isn’t enough money in the state of Virginia to fix this problem by linking these old obsolete systems and you will have a bigger mess if you are able to do it. Still VITA with close ties to IBM refused to consider the obvious solution a RDMS. The people of Virginia apparently have little understanding of the VITA disaster while VITA continues to wastes another $billion of tax payers money.

These failures should be a warning for state governors their IT managers may have close ties to IBM and will only recommend an IBM solution.

In Washington State Governor Gregoire became aware of the problem when a legislator suggested that the new State Data Center would not be an integrated system because the IT manager was going to move the old obsolete systems to the new center.

In a letter to Gov. Gregoire, State Rep. Reuven Carlyle and Rep. Hans Dunshee urged the Governor to seek a second opinion before selling the construction bonds for the new IT Data Center. They wanted her to take a hard look at shifting from “hardware-centric, expensive, IBM proprietary silos of data trapped in old databases” to newer technologies. It now appears that Washington State is considering the implementation of a RDMS in its new State Data Center as recommended by their new IT manager.

The answer is for states to follow Washington State’s example and build a State IT Data Center using Relational Databases rather than patching the old systems.

States Lose Millions by Using Obsolete Computer Systems

There is an incredible lack of understanding of computer systems mostly of a technical nature among state Decision Makers who time after time turn to the wrong people for advice on how to fix their state’s computer problems. Bad IT decisions come about mostly by the failure of Decision Makers in the past who were not computer literate and by the piecemeal stop gap fixing of obsolete stand alone computer application programs. Decision Makers in many cases are led astray by self-serving Information Technology (IT) Managers who wanted to keep their programmers busy by patching and developing new application programs for their obsolete systems.

System implementation planning failures are generally the fault of the Decision Makers funding the project. It wasn’t but a few years ago when almost none of the leaders in government had any computer experience at all. They relied completely on their Information Technology (IT) manager for planning and implementation of computer systems. Even today the situation is not much better. Faced with throwing out all of the present computer applications and implementing what is needed a Relational Database management System (RDMS). IT managers fight to continue their obsolete systems pointing out the cost of bringing up a new RDMS. This argument pales in light of the losses to the state from Medicaid fraud and the inability to manage state services over and above the added cost for maintaining the present obsolete systems.

But what if the Federal Government were to fund the state’s development of their computer applications and RDBS?  Homeland Security is trying to find a way to link all of the states’ motor vehicle registration databases through an unfunded mandate called the Real ID. On the surface this appears to be nearly impossible task since nearly all of these databases have been developed as proprietary systems.

The answer is to have the federal government fund the state’s development of the software application program for a state motor vehicle Relational Database (RD) and give the software to each of the states. Each state would then load the new RD with the motor vehicle data from their old proprietary database. Since the state RDs are easily linked this would provide a giant national motor vehicle RD which could be easily accessed by law enforcement and Homeland Security. 

Among computer literate personnel an organization’s computer department is known as an IBM “shop” or a Digital Equipment “shop” meaning that the organization only uses a specific type of vendor computer hardware. It also means that only IBM or Digital Equipment software is used. When the IBM Operating System software is used all Application Programs are written to run on it. The result is that if the organization only has IBM computers you will most likely get an IBM solution. And you will not get a system that can be integrated with other non-IBM systems. What I have observed is that most IT managers are more loyal to their “shop” (vendor specific system) whatever it is than they are to state Decision Makers. The same problem occurs when Decision Makers seek to contract out services few of them seam to be aware that they are getting a proprietary solution when they contract services to an IBM shop nor do they seam to care about the cost except when there is a major failure and yet they still don’t know what went wrong.

Problems in Missouri 
Most states including Missouri have been developing or purchasing stand alone application programs which store their own data internally. When it becomes necessary to link one application with another a special linking program has to be developed so that an application program can share data between them. This obsolete system is more costly to maintain than a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) using SQL (Structured Query Language). A RDMS has a different architecture, an application program does not store its data within itself but rather stores its data in separate relational databases (RDs). All application programs in the system can access any of the relational databases (RDs) as it needs data for running its application. This means that the amount of stored data in a RDBMS is significantly less since it is not duplicated over and over as it is in the old application programs.

Missouri is still using IBM’s DB2 databases which have been obsolete for the last twenty years. It is a part of the state’s aging computer systems which is a stand alone system and can not be integrated easily with other systems.

Collaborative Innovation between States and Federal Government

Homeland Security is trying to find a way to link all of the states’ motor vehicle registration databases through a program called the Real ID. On the surface this appears to be nearly impossible task since nearly all of these databases have been developed as proprietary systems. The answer is to have the federal government develop the software application program for a state motor vehicle Relational Database (RD) and give the software to each of the states. Each state would then load the new RD with the motor vehicle data from their old proprietary database. Since the state RDs are easily linked this would provide a giant national motor vehicle RD which could be easily accessed by law enforcement and Homeland Security.

The system could also become a National ID database. The addition of a thumb print system would make it a fool proof system for Identification. This would save the public, businesses and the Federal Government $ billions in stolen identities.

This is also a simple solution to a much larger problem. State information systems are mostly obsolete proprietary systems that have been developed over the years by adding application programs that were developed or purchased by the state Computer Information Systems Departments. Each state has sunk $millions into the development of these obsolete systems.

Most states have been developing or purchasing stand alone application programs which store their own data internally. When it becomes necessary to link one application with another a special linking program has to be developed. So that a program can share data with another. This obsolete system is more costly to maintain than a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) using SQL (Structured Query Language). A RDMS has a different architecture, an application program does not store its data within itself but rather stores its data in separate relational databases (RDs). All application programs in the system can access any of the relational databases (RDs) as it needs data for running its application. This means that the amount of stored data in a RDBMS is significantly less since it is not duplicated over and over as it is in the old application programs.

Now for the innovation, the state of Colorado is in the process of developing a centralized RDMS. This is a large undertaking but it was recognized by the state’s IRM as a necessary step to simplifying and reducing the cost of its computer systems. If the federal government were to fund the development of this RDMS in Colorado or some other state the developed software could be provided to all the other states. Each state would load the new application programs and relational data bases onto its computers. Then they would copy their data form the old system into the new relational databases. The old system would be kept running until the new system is up and proven. Only then would they pull the plug on the old system. The Motor Vehicle RD would only be one of the new RDs.

This centralized state RDMS could be expanded to provide computer services for local counties and cities as well. The state of Nebraska uses its state computing capability to do just that provide computer services to local counties and cities within the state.

This RDMS can be easily integrated with the proposal I made for a centralized Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to reduce Red Tape and simplify California’s Agencies and Commissions.